Rome, Italy

Rome was a pretty cool city in general. We spent the first few days on the outskirts in a beach neighborhood called Ostia, and then moved nearer to the center of the city for the remaining days. There isn't a whole that needs to be said about the city - there are so many places to see and so much history there that it was pretty easy to keep busy. Unfortunately, I didn't get to experience much of the night life because I broke a filling and had to get an emergency root canal, and for the few days leading up to that I had an exposed nerve and was in a lot of pain whenever I ate or drank. As per usual, here are some photos:









Looking pensive...











On the whole, sweet city.

Florence / Pisa / Viareggio, Italy

Surprisingly, after all of the cities I have been to so far, Florence was one of my least favorite cities. That's not to say that it wasn't a nice place or that there wasn't anything to do, but the entire thing felt like one big tourist trap - it didn't feel like an authentic Italian city at all. Walking on the streets, you almost NEVER heard Italian spoken, mainly just English and other languages. All shopkeepers and locals tended to speak English as well. The people visiting seemed in a rush to simply see all the churches, museums, etc. before they had to leave, and didn't really care about doing anything else. After a few days I got sick of the city. Nonetheless, it was a pretty city:







I did end up meeting up with my friend Scott who was studying abroad there for the summer, which was fun. We ended up going out a few nights while we were there:



While we were in Florence, we took day trips to Viareggio and Pisa, which are about an hour away by train. Viareggio is just a typical beach town - not super pretty or anything, but very laid-back with beaches, small shops, and bars. I'm you could find much better beaches in Italy, but it offered a nice escape from Florence so we enjoyed it a lot:







There isn't a whole lot to say about Pisa. I think most people just go there for a day to see the leaning tower and leave, because that's about all there is to see there. It seemed like it was nice enough though from what I could tell from walking around:







I do think Florence is probably worth seeing, but unless you are really into the touristy stuff I wouldn't recommend spending a lot of time there. For me, it got old pretty fast.

Parma, Italy

Parma ended up being our first stop in Italy, although it was almost completely unplanned. The first city we arrived in was Milan, and per our usual style, we didn't make any sort of reservations in advance. This was the weekend that Milan was playing in the champions league final, so nearly all the hostels near the center were booked and the cheapest hotels available were in the 200 Euro per night range. We really didn't like the vibe that we got from the city, so after about an hour or two of walking around we went straight back to the train station and caught the next train to somewhere interesting, which ended up being Parma.



Parma was our first taste of Italian food, and it didn't disappoint - after all, Parma is the city where Parmesan cheese was invented. We ended up eating out every day, which was pretty pricey, but definitely worth it. We had lot's of great coffee, bread, wine, pasta, pizza, etc.





The city itself was very nice. It wasn't a very big city, so it had a nice relaxing feel to it. There wasn't much of a party scene there, but there were a decent number of bars and places to hang out at night. We weren't looking for anything crazy at the time, so it was fine. We did end up watching Milan win the Champions league there, which was pretty sweet. We tried to catch the last train back to Milan to pull an all nighter partying there but missed it by about 6 minutes, so we just stayed in Parma to celebrate.

Other than that, there isn't a whole lot more to say about the city. Here are a few other pictures:

Nice, France

Nice was our final stop in France. We had originally planned to go from Montpellier straight to Milan, but there was no direct train so we figued Nice would be a nice place to stop. It is a medium sized town near the border of Italy right between Monaco and Cannes.







We were hoping that it be surrounded by the famous white sand Mediterranean beaches that southern France is known for, but we were disappointed by rocky beaches instead.



We only spent a day there, but it seemed like an overall pretty decent city. It wasn't particularly flashy or pretty, but it did have a few nice areas and seemed like it had a lot of things to offer.